Coming Back Stronger

by Drew Brees

  For most of the history of the franchise, it wasn’t easy to be a Saints fan. They never even made it to the playoffs in the first twenty years of their existence. Some may remember difficult years when fans would come to games with paper bags on their heads. The team was affectionately (or not so affectionately) referred to as the Aints.

  There were high points, of course. The first regular-season play in Saints history was John Gilliam’s ninety-four-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in Tulane Stadium. Then in 1970 Tom Dempsey set an NFL record with his sixty-three-yard field goal, a record that was tied by Jason Elam but still stands today. But in spite of those few shining moments, disappointment and frustration seemed to plague the team year after year. That frustration spilled over to the fans. They desperately wanted to will the Saints to victory, but every season they seemed to be inching closer, another setback hit.

  In the late 1980s, under Jim Mora, the Saints put together some good seasons. In 1987 they finally made it to the playoffs but lost their first NFC wild card game to Minnesota. Three years later they made it back to the wild card game and lost to Chicago. It was the first of three consecutive playoff appearances—and wild card game losses—in the 1990s. It looked like they had a chance to win their first ever playoff game in 1992, but the Philadelphia Eagles came back in the fourth quarter and buried the hopes of the fans and players.

  This was a city that had hosted the Super Bowl seven times in twenty-one years but had never gotten close to playing in one. No matter how hard they played, no matter how frenzied the fans got, at the end of the year they always went home unhappy.

  The frustration built as the years passed. In 1996, after a loss to the Carolina Panthers, head coach Jim Mora summed up the disappointment of not just that game but all the years of coming close and not being able to overcome. “We couldn’t make a first down. We couldn’t run the ball. We didn’t try to run the ball. We couldn’t complete a pass. We couldn’t stop the run. . . . I’m totally embarrassed and totally ashamed. Coaching did a horrible job. The players did a horrible job. . . . It stunk.”

  The next day Jim Mora resigned. In 1997 NFL Hall of Famer Mike Ditka was hired to coach the team, but his efforts were also unsuccessful. The team desperately needed something good to happen.

  In 2000 the curse was finally broken. The Saints finally won their first playoff game in a thriller against the St. Louis Rams. But the next game and the next few years proved to be disappointing. In 2004 there was talk that the team might move away from New Orleans. San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque were mentioned. Some thought that moving from the Crescent City would give the team a fresh start. Leave the past behind.

  Those sentiments intensified later in 2005, but this time it was because of a meteorological phenomenon, not a football catastrophe. At the beginning of that season, a Category 5 hurricane hit, convincing most people that relocation was the only answer. No one knew for sure at that point, but the way things were going, it looked like the Saints would be marching out.

  From Superdome to Ground Zero

  As I was getting ready for the 2005 season in San Diego, news reports trickled in about a big storm heading toward the Gulf Coast. On Friday, August 26, the Saints played a preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens at the Superdome, and they were now looking ahead to their season opener at Carolina. Just two days later, Katrina hit land. The fallout from that storm resulted in the loss of hundreds of lives and billions of dollars worth of damage. It was the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States, and people are still trying to recover. It’s impossible to overstate the tragedy, not just by financial standards, but also in terms of personal loss. The trauma experienced by individuals, families, churches, and communities is incalculable.

  When the storm hit, the team and everyone associated with it felt the devastation. Everyone was displaced—players, coaches, people in the front office, hot dog vendors, those who sold T-shirts. The Superdome was ground zero for those who were unable to evacuate from the city. The horrific reports of dead bodies and criminal activity there in the days following the disaster turned out to be largely unfounded. But the human misery experienced at the Superdome and the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center was palpable. People were hungry and thirsty, and the living conditions quickly became unbearable. These people had just lived through the loss of their homes and belongings, and now they found themselves in another appalling situation.

  Not that a tragedy like this was totally unexpected. This type of storm was something residents had feared for years. As history had proven, hurricanes that push through this area of the country tend to pick up steam because of the warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. Since much of New Orleans and many of the outlying areas are below sea level, a series of levees, canals, and dams had been constructed so storms wouldn’t overwhelm the area.

  There is a misconception that when the storm hit, it simply overcame the levees, causing everything to flood. But you have to understand the intricacies of the waterways in the New Orleans area. The Mississippi River winds around the city in the shape of a crescent. New Orleans is bordered by Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south, and that water eventually flows out into the Gulf. But there are also canals that run from Pontchartrain down into the city. Within those canals a system of pumps helps alleviate high water. When it rains hard in New Orleans—and it can rain really hard here in the spring and the fall—city streets flood, and there is standing water on the roads. The pumping stations take that excess water and dump it back into the canals and Lake Pontchartrain.

  When people were ordered to evacuate before Katrina hit, the pumping stations were also evacuated. There were inevitably going to be floodwaters because of the magnitude of the storm. However, if the pumping stations had remained functional, the flooding might have ended much more quickly. Of course, that didn’t happen, and what the people of New Orleans experienced was a massive loss of lives and property.

  Another misconception is that Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River overflowed. The truth is, the water got pushed down the canals, and the pressure of all that canal water is what caused the levees to break. When that happened, the flooding was almost instantaneous. There were some places where a wall of water came into a community and homes were literally lifted off their foundations and washed away. The people who had stayed behind were overwhelmed in a heartbeat. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to see a towering wave heading straight toward you.

  In the Ninth Ward, there were even more complications. The Industrial Canal runs into the Ninth Ward, and some bigger cargo ships were there when the hurricane hit. A barge came loose from its mooring and rammed into a levee wall. The wall was breached, causing unprecedented flooding in the Ninth Ward and Lower Ninth Ward.

  The entire city had been dealt a crushing blow. Hundreds of thousands of people in and around New Orleans were displaced. The roof of the Superdome was damaged, making it impossible to play there, and the Saints were forced to relocate to San Antonio, Texas. From there, the team traveled around like a vagabond group, playing home games at various stadiums. The guys who returned in 2006 told me it was the worst experience of their lives. They were forced to adapt to an unfamiliar place quickly while the worry about their homes and city was still fresh in their hearts. Living away from home and practicing at subpar facilities all year made many of the guys feel like they had been forgotten.

  The first game for the Saints in 2005, played at Carolina, was a heroic effort. Deuce McAllister scored two touchdowns, and John Carney hit a forty-seven-yard field goal with seven seconds left to secure the win. The next game was to be their home opener against the New York Giants. The team hoped to play in San Antonio or Baton Rouge, which would at least be close to their still-reeling New Orleans. Either city seemed an appropriate place for a charity game to support victims of the storm. But the NFL made the decision to hold that Monday night game at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, a
ka Giants Stadium. It was a Saints “home” game in their opponent’s stadium. That location decision upset a lot of the Saints players, and the team lost 27–10.

  Perhaps the low moment of that early season came in Green Bay, when Deuce McAllister took a pass in the third quarter and his foot got caught in the turf at Lambeau Field. He tore his ACL and was out for the remainder of the year. The Saints lost that game in humiliating fashion, 52–3.

  Football players like the structure of an NFL schedule and feed on that. But there was anything but structure to their lives that season. They woke up in hotel rooms each morning, practiced at high school fields, and tried to get into a regimen in unfamiliar weight rooms. Some players were reeling over damage to their homes, and others had friends and family members who had been completely displaced. With so much upheaval, it was difficult to focus, and the team went 3–13 that year. Coach Jim Haslett was fired at the end of the season.

  On all levels 2006 was a year of rebuilding for the city. Renovation began on the Superdome that eventually cost millions. The people in the community returned and began reconstructing their lives as best they could. And it was into that rebuilding mind-set that Sean Payton was hired. In the midst of all the upheaval, the 2006 Saints held a special place in people’s hearts. You could take them away from their homes, uproot them from their neighborhoods, and dunk their city under twelve feet of water, but you couldn’t take away the love they had for their team. It was a bond that couldn’t be broken. Those fans gave us the love and motivation we needed for what we hoped to accomplish that year.

  The Season Begins

  On September 10, 2006, we played our opening game at the Cleveland Browns Stadium. Like the Saints, the Browns have a storied tradition in the NFL. With names like Paul Brown, Jim Brown, Bernie Kosar, and others, Cleveland has given their fans something to cheer about over the years. Unfortunately they, too, had fallen on hard times and in recent years had a streak of teams that put out extreme effort but earned few wins.

  That season Cleveland and New Orleans were viewed as two of the teams at the bottom of the league. The year before, the Browns had won six to our three. After such a rough preseason, our goal was to just figure out how to win one game. We focused on Cleveland and scratched and clawed the entire contest, with John Carney kicking four field goals. Our rookie running back, Reggie Bush, had 141 all-purpose yards and helped us control the ball. Our defense helped us out with a solid game, and we ended up eking out a 19–14 win.

  It wasn’t pretty; we basically had to grind out the win. But it was a victory all the same, and beating them on their home field gave us a measure of confidence. The locker room afterward was a happy place—we had achieved our goal of winning that first game. But we knew we had our work cut out for us the next week.

  Next Sunday we were on the road again to face the Packers. Lambeau Field is always a difficult place to play—we knew their fans would be out in force. The memory of the Packers embarrassing our team the year before with a 52–3 win gave us that extra edge to motivate us. I don’t live in the past, but we certainly wanted to use what had happened the previous October to spur us on. We wanted to send the message that this was 2006, and we were a different team.

  Beating Cleveland was definitely a start, a stepping stone. Take care of the first game and then you can move on to the second. It would take a lot more to face Green Bay at their place against Brett Favre. If we could somehow pull off a victory against the Packers, it would carry a lot more weight.

  We knew we were underdogs, and in the first quarter we played like it. On our first three possessions, I had three turnovers, giving up two fumbles and throwing an interception. Both fumbles occurred on sacks in the pocket when a defensive end hit my arm as I was throwing. Hits like these can cause shoulder injuries even to healthy arms, but thankfully I came away from both plays feeling durable. Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that Green Bay walked away with the ball in their hands—twice. The Packers scored thirteen unanswered points, and from all objective viewpoints, it looked like they were on their way to a blowout, just like the previous year. That was not the way I had envisioned my first-quarter performance, and human nature was telling me it was time to get really frustrated and start berating myself. You blew it! Are you sure you belong here?

  But I hadn’t come that far to quit. And we hadn’t come that far as a team to quit either. We could have lamented our misfortune, packed up, and headed home. But something was brewing. Something was going on that the fans at Lambeau and the people watching on television couldn’t see. They had no idea how hard we had worked to get where we were. They had no idea of the desire burning in the belly of each player on our team. And they had no idea how much the people of New Orleans meant to us. We were playing for them. So instead of listening to that voice of defeat, I kept visualizing doing things the right way and focusing on what I’d been coached to do.

  The tide turned in the second quarter. We scored two touchdowns, one on a Deuce McAllister run and another on a twenty-six-yard pass to Devery Henderson. That brought us into the lead at the half, 14–13. In the third quarter we added two John Carney field goals, but the Packers came back with a touchdown on the second play of the fourth quarter and tied it 20–20.

  An underdog team is not supposed to win in Green Bay. But we weren’t concerned about that particular Packer tradition. Six and a half minutes into the fourth quarter, we scored a touchdown. Less than thirty seconds later, we scored another. By the time Brett Favre got his offense rolling, the game was over. We won 34–27.

  That win was a watershed moment for us. We had faced adversity, and we hadn’t let it get us down. After the game we talked about what was different for the Saints now. That was a game the Saints probably would have lost in previous years—not necessarily because the team wasn’t as talented but because they didn’t have the positive mentality and belief we exhibited. We really believed we could overcome any situation we found ourselves in. We knew how hard we had worked to get to this point, and we felt confident that the team across the field couldn’t have put in that much sweat and effort. No matter what kind of hole we’d dug for ourselves, we still believed we could go out there and win.

  There have been times in my life when I’ve worked hard, when I’m doing things the right way, and I’m just not getting the opportunities. The people of New Orleans experienced that during the rebuilding after Katrina. People who have been hit hard by the economy feel that way. You don’t know why, but things are really tough. In that moment, there’s a temptation to give up. When you’ve been beaten down and beaten down some more, human nature tells you that it’s not worth it to try to get up again. You might as well stay down, because if you struggle to your feet, you’re just going to get whacked. And when the next bad thing comes along, you shrug and say, “See, there it is. That figures.”

  You have to fight that mentality with everything in you. You have to look around and believe that the negative stuff is there to strengthen you and can eventually lead to a big break. But you have to be on the lookout for it, and you have to keep believing that God can work in the midst of even the most trying circumstances. Adversity equals opportunity. The only way to believe that is to lift yourself up from the ground. Getting up is always the first step.

  After our hard-fought win against Cleveland and then surprising everyone by beating Green Bay in their house, we were gaining momentum at a rapid pace. We had played some inspired football and put two wins together, and with that we believed we could do anything. We could beat anybody who came along.

  Those two wins set up a huge game for my career—and all our careers, for that matter. It was time to come home.

  Homecoming

  For the first time since December 26, 2004, the New Orleans Saints were playing a regular-season home game in the Louisiana Superdome. The city was ready. The support of the fans still sends chills down my spine. Many thought that this moment might never happen again, with talk after th
e storm of the Saints moving to another city and the Superdome being torn down because of all the damage. But on September 25, 2006, there we were. We were up against our division rival the Atlanta Falcons, returning home to the Superdome after a twenty-one-month hiatus. It doesn’t get much better than that.

  In 2005 the season ticket sales for the Saints were somewhere around 32,000 out of the 70,000 seats in the Superdome. In 2006 it would have been understandable if barely any of the seats were filled. After all, people were living out of FEMA trailers, doing battle with insurance companies, short on funds, and trying to find work after so many businesses had been wiped out. On top of that, the Superdome was still in bad shape, and prognosticators warned of a lackluster season at best for us. But when we walked into the stadium for that first home game, we were shocked to see that the people of New Orleans had come out in full force. The seats were filled—in fact, the 2006 season tickets sold out months in advance.

  With so many people barely making ends meet financially as they worked to rebuild their homes and their lives, it was incredible how many had found a way to buy season tickets. We knew there could be only one reason. They looked to our team as a symbol of hope, as something to lift their spirits during those trying times. Our team represented the struggles everyone from New Orleans was going through, and if we could win, then maybe they, too, could overcome the suffering Katrina had caused. An even stronger bond was beginning to form between the fans and the team, and it would carry us all to a place we had only dreamed we could be.

  There was palpable electricity in the air that night. Not only was it a battle for the NFC South, but there was also the historic rivalry between the two teams. Ask anybody walking down the street in New Orleans about the Atlanta Falcons, and chances are you’ll hear some saucy language. Even if we’d both been 0–2, it would have been a contest. But as it was, we were both unbeaten going in.